The Eastern Cape Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (EC COGTA) has completed its two day quarterly technical MuniMEC meeting from 5-6 June 2014, in East London, today. The meeting is attended by Municipal Managers (MM), Heads of Department (HoDs), representatives of Sectors departments, national COGTA and State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).This was the first meeting after the National and Provincial elections held on 07 May 2014. (The department has been formally renamed as the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA). Formal processes are on-going in this regard).
The meeting also took place against the backdrop of the Member of the Provincial Legislature (MPL), Mr Fikile Devilliers Xasa having been deployed as the new political head of department.
“We welcome MEC Xasa and commit our unwavering support to move delivery of services to greater heights to create better communities. In the same vein, we take this opportunity to thank former MEC Mlibo Qoboshiyane for his support and wish him well in is new portfolio. We are excited about the new political challenges and we are energised to continue government work with increased urgency, rigour and accountability,” said the Superintendent-General (SG) of COGTA, Advocate Stanley Khanyile.”
The technical MuniMEC session is the meeting of minds to unblock key service delivery bottlenecks, share best practices as well as foster integrated development planning and implementation to realise meaningful delivery of services to our communities.
Though there has been some improvements on the state of Municipal audits, of particular concern, amongst other things, is the pace of that improvement, which is not as fast as one would have wanted, said Adv. Khanyile.
To date, COGTA has provided support for the establishment of audit committees in 44 municipalities to improve audit outcomes. A consideration should be done to benchmark against the Province of KwaZulu-Natal where 54 out of 61 municipalities received unqualified audit opinions.
Some of the resolutions to be forwarded to the political MuniMEC for adoption and approval include, inter alia:
- Municipal leadership to create an enabling environment for oversight structures to adequately perform their function.
- All municipalities must implement 2012 Provincial MuniMEC Resolutions on the Local Government Communication System (LGCS) during the 2014/15 Financial Year. This includes the appointment of Communicators and budget allocations to enhance and improve communications in Municipalities.
- Municipalities are urged to improve expenditure on capital budgets and infrastructure grants. Further to this, municipalities are urged to pay their creditors on time.
- National Treasury to declare the low revenue generating municipalities and use Municipal Infrastructure Grants (MIG) for Operation and Maintenance 9(O&M) to address reversed backlog.
- Municipalities must improve their revenue collection and implementation of credit control policies as well as strengthen the Supply Chain Management (SCM) and planning processes.
- Provincial Planning and Treasury (PPT) to give formal warnings and invoke Division of Revenue Act (DORA) (s17) to municipalities that persistently fail to report and comply.
EC COGTA remains impatient with none performance hence there will be serious consideration for consequence management to address the malaise.
“We are working hard with the leadership in municipalities and other key stakeholders to professionalise local government so that we have less complaints and protests from our communities. As public servants we occupy our positions in the service of human kind to heal the divisions of the past and create better communities,” said SG Khanyile.
Cogta takes this opportunity to urge all parties, particularly Traditional leaders to take a lead in preventing any deaths of initiates as we approach the traditional initiation season. Families must also take responsibility for allowing the young initiates only when they are ready to undergo the initiation ritual.
Enquires:
Mamnkeli Ngam
Cell: 071 685 7981
